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Antispam Bee

By pluginkollektiv

Security & Privacy / Spam & Bot Protection

Reviewed by Omar Dabbas

Trusted WordPress expert with 20+ years of experience evaluating plugins for the WP ecosystem.

Antispam Bee Review - In-Depth Analysis

Antispam Bee is a powerful antispam plugin designed to block comment and trackback spam effectively. It prioritizes data protection and privacy while being user-friendly.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

7.32/10

User Rating

4.8/5 (based on 226+ reviews)

Active Installations

700,000+

Update Frequency

Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

5 / 10 (Medium Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

Say goodbye to comment spam on your WordPress blog or website. Antispam Bee blocks spam comments and trackbacks effectively, without captchas and without sending personal information to third party services. It is free of charge, ad-free and 100% GDPR compliant.

This plugin offers various features such as trusting approved commenters, allowing comments only in specific languages, and blocking or allowing commenters from certain countries. Additionally, it provides spam statistics on the dashboard, including daily updates of spam detection rates and a total of blocked spam comments.

Community support is available via the support forums on wordpress.org, and documentation can be found on the official website. Active development of this plugin is handled on GitHub, where contributions and translations are welcomed.

Comparing to Alternatives

Antispam Bee competes in a crowded field of comment spam blockers, many of which rely on third-party APIs, CAPTCHAs, or honeypots. Its appeal lies in doing the job locally and privately without external services.

Top alternatives

Strengths

Highly effective spam detection with minimal false positives reported by users
No API key or external service required, appealing to privacy-conscious site owners
Simple setup with minimal configuration needed
Consistently praised as more reliable than Jetpack's spam filtering
Free with no upsells or premium tier confusion

Weaknesses

Lacks some advanced form-protection features found in dedicated anti-spam suites
No official pro version means feature development depends solely on community/maintainer priorities

User Sentiment Analysis

With 226 ratings and a 4.8/5 average, sentiment is overwhelmingly positive—94.2% of reviewers gave 5 stars, and only 4.4% left a 1 or 2-star rating. Reviews consistently praise the plugin's effectiveness and simplicity.

Positive highlights

"Catches all the spam and deletes it before I get a chance to see it... better than JetPack" — Terence Eden
"With this plugin spam zero, you read it right zero!" — dolceremy
"I don't have time for this... going to go load antispam bee on all my clients sites" — hmibarrylsalter
"Have used this for years... a real gem of a plugin" — justinw1970
"I haven't seen a single spam comment on my blog for many years now. Kudos." — xpil

Common complaints

Weaknesses

A medium-severity IP spoofing vulnerability (CVSS 5) affected versions prior to 2.11.4, though it has since been patched
No negative reviews were available to identify specific recurring pain points

Who Should Use This?

Best for

Bloggers, freelancers managing multiple client sites, and privacy-focused site owners who want effective, no-frills comment spam protection without relying on external APIs or CAPTCHAs.

Not ideal for

Users needing broader form or login-protection features beyond comments, or those who require guaranteed enterprise-level support; site owners should also confirm they are running version 2.11.4 or later given the past IP spoofing vulnerability.

Pricing & Value

Free version includes

The free version provides full comment and trackback spam filtering, blacklist/whitelist management, and privacy-friendly local detection with no feature restrictions or nags.

Final Verdict

Antispam Bee earns its strong reputation through consistent, effective spam filtering and a refreshingly simple, privacy-respecting approach. User sentiment is excellent, with almost no negative reviews and repeated praise for outperforming alternatives like Jetpack. Compared to competitors such as CleanTalk or Zero Spam, it stands out by avoiding external APIs entirely, which appeals to users wary of data-sharing.

One caveat is the patched IP spoofing vulnerability from versions before 2.11.4, so users should ensure they're updated. Given it's completely free with no pro tier, and delivers reliable results according to nearly all reviewers, Antispam Bee is a low-risk, high-value choice for anyone battling comment spam.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free Antispam Bee plugin.

Anti-spam

Antispam

Spam Protection

Screenshots

FAQ

Antispam Bee works best with default WordPress comments. It does not help to protect form plugins and does not prevent spam registrations. Hopefully we can provide better hooks for third party plugins to use Antispam Bee to fill this gap in the forthcoming new major version.